This Sunday we celebrate a very special party in the North, the pilgrimage of La Orotava in honour of San Isidro Labrador and Santa María de la Cabeza. With a week’s delay due to the June 9th elections, the party doesn’t stop here. Magicians, perfectly dressed, are ready to accompany the saint from the Cruz del Teide to the Ermita del Calvario. Going down the steep streets of the Villa is quite a challenge for the seventy-five carts, pulled by oxen, rescuing traditional scenes, many of them almost forgotten or unknown to the younger generation. The most professional musicians, accompanied by well-tuned voices, blend in with amateurs who confidently tackle the most popular verses, shaping, year after year, the soundtrack of what is rightfully considered the most beautiful party in Canarias.
This consideration was coined by a villager that perhaps many do not know. Felipe Casanova Machado was born in the Villa de la Orotava in 1897. He was a jurist and administrative manager, but above all, a composer and great musician. As Manuel Hernández González well said in the 2017 La Orotava festivities’ prelude: “His contribution to the island folklore has not been sufficiently recognised, and his work must be rescued, as he not only immortalised, together with Tomás Calamita Manteca, the Orotava of the early 20th century in their zarzuela ‘Cosas del pueblo’, but also gave birth to the most universal song of its pilgrimage, ‘And if this isn’t an isa’, whose verses exalt the Villa and its celebrations by saying in its stanzas: I dress up as a magician with joy, and I sing my songs like prayers, because of San Isidro, the pilgrimage, the most beautiful party in Canarias.

The party doesn’t end / El Día
This year, after the Vatican’s Patronage was granted last summer to San Isidro Labrador, the pilgrimage is celebrated, for the first time, officially as patron saint festivities, since until now they were simply major festivities. But, apart from this celebration – which will bring together more than 25,000 people in the Villa – I would like to introduce another tradition not so well known, except in the municipality of Icod de los Vinos. The festivity of San Antonio is celebrated in this neighbourhood in Icod with the launching of the hot air balloon that Mundo Delgado makes every year, following the technique learned from his father, Pepe el Capijo, and also known by his children and grandchildren. “During the town festivals, it was a tradition for the firework makers to launch small balloons, but it was my father who dared to make them larger until reaching four to five metres. Until a few years ago, this custom was also followed in other places in the Archipelago such as in Santa Brígida (Gran Canaria) or on the island of La Palma, but nowadays the custom has been lost and only remains in this northern point of Tenerife,” Mundo comments, recalling how this newspaper was the first to spread this tradition back in the sixties. “It was Salvador Pérez, a teacher in the municipality of La Guancha who wrote his chronicles in EL DÍA, who echoed the launch of the Icod balloon.”
Pepe el Capijo, a shoemaker by trade, made these artefacts with coloured papers or old newspapers, but his son Mundo has given it his personal touch by drawing different scenes on each of the thirteen panels that make up each balloon, as if it were a large orange. The final result of these works can only be seen on the day of the launch, as it inflates due to the heat effect. Mundo has also managed to surpass the dimensions of his father’s balloons, which now reach seven metres in length with a diameter of about four metres. He tells us about the development of this laborious process, which starts with designing the drawings based on the chosen current topics to continue painting those thirteen designs that he will then have to stick. “Until the moment of unfolding the balloon, we do not know the final result or if there will be any mishap that could ruin the work done.”

The party doesn’t end / El Día
On the day of the launch, the necessary safety measures are taken, considering that nowadays the techniques used before are not employed due to the risk of using flammable material. In the past, the firework makers used cotton balls soaked in burning alcohol or petroleum, and this allowed them to reach much greater distances. Nowadays, it rises without a wick, solely with hot air which is lighter and accumulates in that structure tending to rise more easily, reaching one or two kilometres. “In this way, it is very easy to retrieve it, although its final destination is to turn into ashes from the San Juan bonfires as the ephemeral art it is,” Mundo recalls.
This time, the San Antonio festival balloon is dedicated to the students of the Infant and Primary School (CEIP) Campino, who wear the Icod balloon logo on their uniforms. Last year, Mundo chose other curious themes such as the tribute to Proteo, the rescue dog that managed to save several people’s lives in the Turkey earthquake. But this retired Telefónica employee who has inherited the great responsibility of keeping a nearly lost tradition alive not only carries out this artisanal work for the San Antonio festivals. A few months ago, he already launched another balloon, on the occasion of the International Day of the.
Theatre Tribute to Writer from Icod and Balloons Tradition in the Canary Islands
In homage to the icodense writer Hermenegildo Socas Cruz, while another of the commissions carried out was the tribute to the deceased bandmates of the musical group Los Chincanayros.
According to Pedro Socorro, the official chronicler of Santa Brígida, the release or lifting of hot air balloons was a deeply rooted custom in the popular festivals of the Canarian towns since the mid-19th century. They progressively appeared in the press of the time, sometimes brought from Barcelona, but also handcrafted. Although it is not possible to know exactly when and how this tradition began, we know that on Sunday, August 23, 1896, a black pear-shaped fabric balloon measuring 22 meters high and 48 in circumference was raised in the square of León and Castillo, Arucas, crewed by Jaime Campany, as recounted in a manuscript on the city’s history by the former priest and chronicler Pedro Marcelino Quintana Miranda.
Going back to the invention of this artefact, credit goes to the Montgolfier brothers, who lived in France where they had a paper factory. There, they observed how smoke rose from the fire and had the idea. Joseph and Jacques discovered that hot air is lighter and, therefore, if enclosed, it would lift a structure light enough as happened with the first flight of the balloon built of a kind of paper, with a somewhat whimsical design compared to present-day hot air balloons. The Montgolfier brothers placed it just above a small fire structure that, when filled with hot air, made it ascend vertically.

The party doesn’t end / El Día
But what is even more curious is that we have to go back to the north of Tenerife to discover that two prominent citizens born here were the pioneers in Spain in launching hot air balloons. On November 28, 1783, Agustín de Bethencourt y Molina, father of modern engineering, born in Puerto de la Cruz and founder of the School of Civil Engineers, was the architect of the first unmanned ascent, while the priest from Los Realejos, José Viera y Clavijo, carried out the release of another balloon days later, specifically from the Marqués de Santa Cruz gardens. The former focused on steam engines and hot air balloons, as well as structural engineering and urban planning. In Viera y Clavijo’s case, a leading figure of the Canarian Enlightenment, one of his great challenges was the elevation of a hot air balloon. Having learned about the virtues of aeronautics in Paris, his studies on gases allowed him to achieve that goal on December 15, 1783.
I don’t know if Pepe followed the technique of the engineer from Puerto or the enlightened priest from Los Realejos back in the day, but what I do know is that the Capijos’ balloons continue to take flight each year in search of a new horizon. And for those wondering about the origin of the nickname, I will tell you that it comes from Mundo’s grandmother, Juana la Capita, named as such for her profession as a seamstress and great skill in making capes that were also worn by her brothers, two tall and slender men who stood out for being quite posh. Hence, Los Capijos. And here I was thinking that posh was a very current term…
Above these lines, Felipe Casanova Machado, author of the most universal song of his pilgrimage, Y si esto no es una isa; to the left, examples of hot air balloons from the San Antonio festivities in Icod de los Vinos.